North Korea Completes Prep For Nuclear Test, South Korea Warns

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has briefed his parliament on what he described as imminent plans of North Korea to conduct its first nuclear test in five years.

“We assess that it has already completed preparations for a seventh nuclear test,” President Yoon Suk-yeol said Tuesday. He reminded lawmakers that Kim Jong-un has already justified the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, making a test if carried through a severe threat to Seoul’s as well as the broader region’s security. 

White House national security official John Kirby has also lately reiterated the US intelligence belief that the north “could conduct a nuclear test at any time.”

According to Bloomberg, “The US, South Korea and Japan have all pledged stern and united punishment for a nuclear test, which would be in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.” Likely this would come in the form of more sanctions – though we wonder what is left in North Korea to sanction at this point, in terms of making actual impact on the regime.

In early August, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began warning that such a test remains imminent. He said at the time in an address to the 10th NPT Review Conference (or Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) at UN headquarters in New York that “The DPRK continues to expand its unlawful nuclear program and continues its ongoing provocations against the region.”

This week, Foreign Affairs has described Washington’s broader alarm over what a nuclear test could mean for the region: nothing less than a new regional atomic arms race…

“The fact that North Korea has had nuclear weapons for so long (its first nuclear test was in 2006) has inured analysts and policymakers to the gravity of the threat,” the publication observed. “The North can now credibly threaten the continental United States with nuclear weapons. But the threat goes beyond U.S. domestic security: North Korea’s development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) could spark an arms race in northeast Asia.”

“Kim’s saber rattling has increased public support in South Korea for that country to acquire its own nuclear capability, something that previously would have been regarded as implausible. A South Korean decision to go nuclear would prod China and Japan to augment their own weapon arsenals,” Foreign Affairs continued. With no easy solutions, the Biden administration has failed to articulate a policy response to these developments. It needs to get more engaged to prevent another crisis from spinning out of control.”

Pyongyang and Washington haven’t had any real communications or honest dialogue since the last two years of the Trump administration, with the Biden White House appearing to not so much as attempt open lines of communication. Instead, there’s been a build-up of joint US-S.Korea military exercises off the peninsula.